Tucson Gem & Mineral Show

Tucson, AZ

On Friday, Feb. 13 I again borrowd my son-in-law’s truck and drove to Tucson. My main objective was the Arthur Roe Memorial Micromount Symposium, but I figured I’d see the main show as well, since both were in the Convention Center.

The Tucson Convention Center

The trip was easy, except for the construction on I-10 in Tucson. I had to exit the interstate on the north side of Tucson and take the frontage road on in.

The symposium was well attended, but was run quite differently from other symposia. The room was set up in auditorium fashion, with only a few tables for microscopes on one side. The “freebies” were not available until after the talks had concluded.

Herwig Pelckmans’ talk on Mineral Oddities from the Eifel Area, Germany was excellent. Alfredo Petrov’s talk on collecting in Japan was more travelogue than mineral related, and was to some extent a sales pitch for his and Frank deWit’s business of guided collecting trips.

During the lunch break I walked through the Main Show. It was, as expected, spectacular.

A view of the main show from the concourse.

One of the exhibit cases.

Photographing the cases was difficult. Colors don’t seem to come out right. I suspect there’s something in or on the glass to protect the specimens from light that causes this. Here’s another example:

Back at the micromount symposium, the freebie tables were only open for a few hours, so one had to just grab material without examining it. As a result, although I did get some very nice material that I needed, I also wound up with quite a bit that I already had.

On to the next field trip, the Harborlite Quarry

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